INSPIRATION:Our motivation came from our own experience of working at the various companies and start-ups were the communication among colleagues and partners was an essential aspect of daily work activities. Using the contemporary smartphones often challenged the flow of our conversations and the circulation of our ideas. The inspiration came from our realisation that the smartphones, in their present form, are in fact entertainment devices packed with unnecessary features (for instance: cameras, apps, games, etc.). That is, these features of the mobile operating system are not needed in order to be more productive and efficient at work. Blloc is the result of our leading question: How to make the communication at work reliable, focused and as direct as possible?

UNIQUE PROPERTIES / PROJECT DESCRIPTION:Blloc represents a novel approach to mobile operating system. What makes it unique is the synchronization of the conceptual solution of its software and its hardware technology. That is, combining a power saving display technology with a power-bank battery size, and a secure easy to use messaging platform, it is built to be the perfect communication and productivity tool that you can rely on at work. Simultaneously, Blloc OS unifies all your application-scattered exchanges into a one single timeline. How does this happen? Instead of entering various apps (eg. Viber, Messenger) which have their own conversation timelines, Blloc merges these various dialogue spaces into one. As a result, the conversation with others is unbroken.

OPERATION / FLOW / INTERACTION:Our aim was to develop a mobile phone that is straightforward. By eliminating all apps and internal menu on the phone, Blloc’s operates on a command issued directly by its user. That is, in order to write an E-mail, reply to a message or search in Google, the user writes a message directly on the screen or types search. This way Blloc receives commands directly and executes them without browsing through apps and without scrolling down the data.

PROJECT DURATION AND LOCATION:Blloc was founded in October 2016 in Berlin

PRODUCTION / REALIZATION TECHNOLOGY:Bloc is made of aluminum unibody shell which is made with a laser and CNC cutter. It is anodized and electroplated. It has a 4.8 inch display which uses AMOLED technology whose advantages are higher contrast, energy efficiency, and eco-friendliness. Finally, the produced quality of readability is exceptional due to display’s deep blacks and high contrast.

SPECIFICATIONS / TECHNICAL PROPERTIES:76.3mm x 9.1mm x 150.3mm

TAGS:smartphone, OS, monochromatic, monochrome, business phone

RESEARCH ABSTRACT:We started with the idea that, although smartphones help us keep in touch with colleagues or finish tasks on the move, ultimately, they lead to distraction and unproductivity at work. To tackle this issue we wanted to change the operational system of the phone, and so by removing the internal menu and apps, while at the same time preserving the phone’s full connectivity and communication functions. When creating this phone we primarily targeted those who need focus in their daily working routines.

CHALLENGE: When designing Blloc we faced two main challenges. First, how to make the hardware of the phone user-friendly but also robust? To tackle this problem we used an AMOLED display which proved to be a low energy consumption display . Second challenge was how to achieve a user friendly interface (eg. all that is visual) which minimally makes use of the hardware? The way we managed this is by synchronizing hardware and software components of the system. That is, the user interface (for instance: animations) barely uses hardware in the process of rendering its own elements (for instance: pop-up notifications, showing messages etc).

Blloc Phone Business Smartphone by Mladen Hoyss is a Nominee in Digital and Electronic Devices Design Category.

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